We All Fall Down
by Bellsie805
Summary: She'd die physically from the repercussions of the cigarettes. But her soul was freshly dead. House had done a good job of that.


**Author's Note:** While researching an English project on Edna St. Vincent Millay, I stumbled upon one of her sonnets and thought it would fit beautifully with an angsty one-shot. Millay owns the sonnet and I don't own any _House_ characters.

_Only until this cigarette is ended, _

_A little moment at the end of all, _

_While on the floor the quiet ashes fall, _

_And in the firelight to a lance extended, _

_Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended, _

_The broken shadow dances on the wall, _

_I will permit my memory to recall _

_The vision of you, by all my dreams attended. _

_And then adieu,--farewell!--the dream is done. _

_Yours is a face of which I can forget _

_The colour and the features, every one, _

_The words not ever, and the smiles not yet; _

_But in your day this moment is the sun _

_Upon a hill, after the sun has set._

After deciding to leave the hospital and the medical profession forever, she had taken up smoking once again. One of her many boyfriends had smoked long ago, and, after so many nights in the same room, in the same space, the smoke got to her, and, when he left, she realized that she craved not the man, but his cigarettes. She bought her first pack of Virginia Slims and forgot about the boyfriend. She quit when she came to work for House, but had started up after the disastrous date. Her cigarettes would kill her, yes, but they would not abandon her.

This was a jazz bar, reminiscent of the smoky speakeasies of the 1920s, but these people now were trying to escape from something. They didn't come to listen _to_ the music; they came to drown in the music. Cameron appreciated a good jazz bar. She stubbed the lipstick-stained cigarette into a cheap, forest green ashtray next to her and pushed it away. Liquor, something strong, was what she needed now.

"Hey, bartender, vodka on the rocks, please."

"Alright, lady. One vodka on the rocks commin' up."

The man walked away and Cameron looked at the pianist and the saxophonist. She loved the saxophone and _he_ loved the piano. _He _was the reason she was sitting in the seediest bar she could find, waiting for someone to take her home with them.

She didn't _sell_ herself, but she needed something to heal wounds that she could not. He had left her hanging nine nights ago and now was pining over Stacy. She couldn't face him anymore. She couldn't look as he drooled piteously over Stacy. She had decided on her drive here that she would not return to the hospital. Ever the coward she was, she would run away with her cigarettes and hide until the end of time.

The saxophone's wail screamed throughout the room. Cameron unconsciously shuddered. Loud noises always irritated her the same way she must have irritated him. He left her for some imagined women. And because he did that, she had made herself into something that _he_, and any man, would want. A whore, a slut, and chain-smoking doctor who instead of healing peoples' minds she prayed that people would heal her sore soul.

She had for a long time been abused at the hands of men. Not physically or emotionally, but she had taken enough shit time and time again from boyfriend after boyfriend and she was sick of it after the first time. She was going to die because of one of their horrible habits. She'd die _physically _of that. Of course, her soul was freshly dead. House had done a good job of that.

It had only been ten days and already the lines on her face were deeper than she had every hoped they would be. No women in her right mind wishes for wrinkles, but they slowly accept the fact that with age and wisdom comes agony and wrinkles. Cameron didn't believe it. She was still _young_, and already she had been a widow and lost more boyfriends than she could remember.

She tried to keep a diary once and that had failed miserably. The first few entries were morosely morbid. Every entry was the same: _what a terrible day. _

The urge for another cigarette enveloped her senses. She fumbled for the pack that she always carried with her, but found that it was empty. She cursed under her breath, but the desire lessened when the bartender set the vodka in front of her.

"Vodka. That's my guy."

She downed the liquid with one gulp. The bartender looked on carefully.

"Are you okay?"

"Of course I am. Fan-freaking-tastic."

Cameron got up from the stool and walked away from the counter. She hated people who asked questions. Once she had been patient. Once she had been nice. Once upon a time…

Those words started _fairy tales_. Fairy tales! They were the words that poisoned every girl's brain from the start of childhood to the early "tween" years.

"Oh, _of course_, there's happily ever after."

"Nothing ever goes wrong."

"Even you will find your prince charming."

Those were the words that mothers told their daughters and daughters told their daughters. The lies grew with each generation, and no one stopped them from growing; let the precious angels grow up in peace and the false comforts of lies.

_Everybody lies_.

Oh, how she remembered his words. When his face had grown fuzzy after too many drinks and too many cigarettes, she only remembered his words. The biting remarks, the stinging reprimands, and the oft-thrown insults—time would steal his and her looks, but his words would be left standing. His words were the Parthenon and their looks were like brittle pieces of ancient papyrus; time would not remember their faces, but people would still talk about that bastard of a doctor years from now.

Cameron was a good drunk—many drinks downed had gained her a resistance to the stupefying affects of alcohol. She grabbed her coat and walked out the door to her car. Ten days and she realized she loved who might_ like_ her, but never love her. He had left her to go to that slut, Stacy. And that left her here, in her car, with the glove compartment dangerously close. She looked back at the bar and weighed her options.

Yes, the piano reminded her of him. And every cigarette she smoked buried her deeper in the ashes and cleansed her of the anger she felt towards him. The vodka cleared the bad taste in her mouth. She opened the glove compartment and took out the gun, unsure of what she was going to do.

The comforting, cold, hard metal made her know that, tomorrow morning when she never arrived at the Princeton-Plainsboro teaching hospital, he would know it was his fault. Wilson had warned her not to break his heart—but House had broken hers.

And her heart now laid in fluttery pieces on the ground like the scattered ashes from her many cigarettes. The lines from a children's nursery rhyme came back to her…

_Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!_

Yes, she knew, it was all ashes and ashes of shattered bodies and hearts and minds that never had a chance. And, of course, we all fall down. Death brings certainty and in this uncertain world, Cameron needed something certain.

She wouldn't be finding it in this grimy bar's parking lot. Nor would she be finding certainty down a gun's barrel. Certainty, she knew, would be found within a bottle of vodka and another pack of Slims. She threw the gun on the floor of the passenger's seat and gunned the engine.

There were two more bars to get drunk at and the night was already growing old.


End file.
